Head Sparkling
Head Sparkling
News that the runner-up and the Second Prince were about to duel soon spread across campus.
"Is that true?"
"I'm telling you, it's real. They said it's starting any minute now!"
"Let's go watch."
Since ancient times, watching other people fight had been the best entertainment. Students gathered at the Grand Stadium in ones and twos and threes. A few brought food with them.
A crowd heading toward the Grand Stadium. One small girl moved against the flow.
It was Frey. She ran panting toward the campus cafeteria.
On one side of the cafeteria, a snack corner offered unlimited munching.
Frey immediately pulled out donghwa and thrust the coins at the student working the snack counter.
"Honey-butter-caramel-mel-popcorn, large size! Hurryyyyyy─!!"
Frey returned to her original seat, chomped down her popcorn, and sat beside Rote.
"You can swallow food at a time like this?"
"Yep."
"The prince had her magic sealed. I think she's in trouble...."
"It's fine. The blondie's gonna win this one anyway!"
For a non-mage to beat a mage was unreasonable on its face. Though Prince Clion was a mere apprentice who had never caught a single magic beast, he was still an outstanding talent good enough to be placed in the Special Class. At the very least, his amount of magical power had to exceed that of an ordinary person.
That was what worried Rote. She couldn't feel certain that Aether, a member of the Gold-Eye Tribe, could beat Clion without a Mana Cigarette.
The person who took this situation most seriously was Irka.
Lady Irka Eliyev, daughter of Viscount Eliyev. She had, before she knew it, effectively staked her fate on one golden-eyed girl. At first she tried to protest, but....
─ It's fine. That one will win somehow.
Because the top-ranked entrant, Vermel, had said so. If Vermel, who had defeated her by an overwhelming margin during the practical, believed it, then for some reason she felt she could believe it too.
Irka nodded for now. No matter what anyone said, her own skill and the prince's were about even. Even if they dueled, there was no guarantee she could seize victory from beginning to end.
On the other hand, she didn't know Aether's combat style. So she stayed anxious but also secretly hopeful.
Just how, exactly, would a member of the Gold-Eye Tribe fight?
"Alright, I'll go over the rules. The time limit will be ten minutes. If during that time neither side declares surrender or becomes combat-incapable, the match is ruled a draw. Naturally, be careful not to step out of the ring and harm the other students."
A Schoolyard Duel took place within the bounds of the legal net. A combat mage bearing the title of teacher watched the duel and rendered judgment. The teacher could also intervene during the duel if necessary. No matter what, nobody was supposed to die.
However.
"Even if you get hurt, there's no need to worry. Most injuries will be processed through the school's insurance at the school's expense."
If the teacher was Meriga Herlein, she was unlikely to intervene unless things got extreme.
Though it was called a duel, it wasn't real combat. The two of them stood inside the ring, protected by damage-mitigation magic.
"Utterly irresponsible. To stake the fate of Viscount Eliyev's daughter as collateral on a single duel. Are all Golden-Eyes like this?"
"No clue, you little shit."
"I'll turn that face of yours bright red in no time. Prepare yourself."
Clion pulled his staff from Subspace and aimed his point of aim at Aether. Aether also swung the staff she had readied in advance, checking its weight.
Aether didn't tremble. Even without a Mana Cigarette, she loosened up leisurely.
The truth was, she could now handle mana without smoking a Mana Cigarette.
─ Magic Guide for Physicists Traveling in a Fantasy World (Intermediate)
The magic book the girl possessed had its "Invisible Mode" activated.
In other words, no one except Aether noticed the book's existence. That included Prince Clion. Nobody in the Grand Stadium, the prince included, knew Aether was cheating.
[Amount of magical power currently charged: 102 sieverts.]
A feature that had appeared when Aether's Hardcover Book advanced to intermediate functions. Thanks to that feature, Aether could now use techniques roughly one to three times a day.
"If you surrendered now and came to me as an attendant, you wouldn't even have to get hurt, you know."
"Heh."
The girl wore a dark, gamey smile as she answered Clion, who was taunting her.
"I'll beat you down like I'm deboning a fish."
**
Battle hung in the air.
"Both of you ready yourselves. I'll start in three seconds!"
Three, two, one.
"Begin!"
Pababak─!!
The moment Meriga lowered the flag, the girl kicked off the earth and shot forward. Ten meters closed in less than a single second.
Clion was momentarily thrown off. This was completely different from what he had expected.
"That's a speed a human can produce?"
At Rote's question, Frey answered for her.
"That's Martial Art."
"Martial Art? You mean the Martial Art the beastmen use?"
"Yeah. It's not widely known, but historically, the Gold-Eye Tribe were the ones who first developed the Martial Art. The beastmen borrowed it later."
Lacking mana, they had sought to at least train their bodies. The Gold-Eye Tribe, contrary to their appearance, were born with high physical ability. They were truly skilled at both literary and martial pursuits.
Honestly, if a race couldn't use magic, it would only make sense for their brains and bodies to be superior, wouldn't it? Balance and all. If that weren't the case, it would mean the Goddess was discriminating against Her own creations. The benevolent and impartial creator of this world could not possibly harbor such prejudice.
The skills she'd honed hunting magic beasts in the back mountain hadn't gone anywhere. Her movements were crude, but they were more than enough.
Aether thought back to when she was still a slave.
─ Understand? You can't think of fighting people the same way you think of fighting magic beasts.
It had been advice from Professor Herlein. Advice that had certainly helped when she fought Rote.
But not against Clion.
The crime of trying to make her drop out of school to take her as a concubine. The crime of pinning a false charge on a classmate to worsen their family relations. The crime of letting lust blind him and losing the trust of the people who would have supported him in the future.
In Aether's eyes, the prince in front of her didn't register as a human being.
So, she had to make him into one.
She bent her waist forward and shaped her body into a spindle. The motion minimized air resistance. Aether twisted her body on a diagonal and swung her iron staff straight at him.
"You bitch!"
He had to chant a spell. Clion opened as much distance as possible and formed Water Bullet. He gathered what was in the air and created water drops. The drops soon turned into high-pressure water jets.
Dozens of water jets surged to block the charging girl. They moved like a writhing sea dragon.
Aether dodged all of it. The ground, now soaked in moisture, was muddy. Even so, it had no effect on the girl's movement speed.
The girl swatted one of the incoming water jets with the tip of her staff, bending it into the dirt.
The jet splashed down right in front of Clion's feet. Less than a single meter away. Mud kicked up by the water pressure became shrapnel and blocked Clion's vision.
"Guh!"
She hadn't batted away something she could have dodged for no reason. It was a calculated move.
"Eightfold Way."
In the next instant, Clion felt an indescribable fluctuation in the amount of magical power.
A vector field of mana flowing in from outside, not from his own body. The flow of Mana Particles clearly radiated from the direction the girl occupied.
Did she put a Mana Cigarette in her mouth?
No.
Her right hand. She was holding something invisible in her right hand and tugging in mana.
There was no time to stand there analyzing the spectacle. Sensing danger on instinct, Clion hurriedly cast his next magic.
Clion's class was Caster, the same as Rote's.
He could stock many spells, but he lacked a proper way to respond if his opponent closed in for melee. Rote, who was also adept at close-quarters combat, was the outlier. An ordinary caster became helpless once they let someone into range.
Three minutes had passed. The preliminary skirmish was over. Up to now, Aether had merely been testing whether Clion possessed the same countermeasures Rote did. The moment she confirmed he didn't, the girl wore a murderous grin and dashed at full speed.
"You crazy─!"
It didn't compare to before. The ground caved in along every arc of Aether's charge. This kind of leg strength couldn't possibly come from that frail-looking body. It was as if her apparent mass and actual weight differed.
Clion gathered all the mana in his body and deployed the greatest spell he could manage.
A tidal wave rose. In the middle of dry land, salt-laden seawater manifested.
The tsunami, which appeared as though summoned by the tides, transformed the Grand Stadium into a beach. A mass of electrolytes greedily devoured the land as it surged toward the girl.
Exclamations erupted from all over the spectator stands.
It was an unavoidable tsunami. To dodge a sheet of water sweeping across a plane, you had to either go up, or dig a foxhole and hide. Aether had no such ability.
If it hit her head-on, she would fall backward. She would roll across the dirt along with briny, froth-laced water. This was a tsunami a girl barely out of her teens could not possibly absorb with her body.
Absolutely, a direct hit meant a concussion.
Rote and Irka each bit their lips. Even now, only Frey wore a relaxed expression as she munched her popcorn.
Meriga debated whether to stop it here, but she soon decided not to intervene.
'As long as she doesn't die on the spot, it'll be fine. That person is in the infirmary, after all.'
Facing the two-story wave, Aether thrust her staff out, gripping it lengthwise in both hands. It was to maximize rotational inertia.
She felt her body brimming with mana.
It was time to use a different skill slot, one she hadn't needed to show during her fight with Rote.
The girl swung her staff and shouted.
Eightfold Way — Second Form.
"Avalanche Breakdown─!!"
The moment she swung her staff, the two-story tsunami split in half.
The severed wave altered its motion vector and reversed course back toward Clion.
An electric current began coiling around the wave. The water molecules in the energized tsunami heated up at high speed. The electrons that composed the H₂O ripped away one by one, then swam forward until they reached Clion.
It was not a flow of Mana Particles.
It was an electron avalanche.
Amid water that held lightning, the girl swam from one end of the ring to the other.
"Ugh, uwaaaaaagh!!"
Magic wasn't working. He couldn't use any other Magic Arts. Every time he tried, the circuits inside his body felt like they were burning away.
His vision blurred. It was a sensation he had experienced once before.
At dawn, in front of the fountain, when an unidentified blade had pierced his abdomen. It felt similar to then.
Aether brought her staff down on him with terrifying force.
Clion foresaw that he was fucked.
"Wait! I, I lost!! I surr──!!"
Pwaaaaaaak─!!